Seems to me there is near unanimity from relevant scientists & physicians that female trans athletes have no advantage over their female cis counterparts.

If the state of that knowledge changes, then by all means revisit the rules, but unless & until that happens, banning trans women & girls from competing is deeply unfair & arbitrary.

I could see that a trans girl or woman who has yet to commence HRT might have some physical advantages, but until we're considering national level competition, I think it is reasonable to let this (utterly tiny) minority compete.

For high level stuff, it would be easy to have a requirement of being on HRT for a minimum period. That said, attaining one's peak achievable performance whilst going through what amounts to a second round of puberty sounds... impossibly hard.

Full of admiration for everyone who has fought to achieve this. Am certain it will inspire many to join in the push to protect workers.

Control, mostly, at least at the meta level.

Many of the parents who freak out hold a lot of shame themselves surrounding bodies & sex, having been denied good sex ed. It is their job to ensure they don't pass that to their children, but I imagine this is easier said than done, especially if shame & ignorance are normalised within a culture.

For them, the best argument may be that children who do not know about sex are vastly more vulnerable, not only to bizarre information and unpleasant mistakes, but to sexual predators.

There have been no elections in Gaza since 2006

At that point, Hamas won on a plurality of 41%.

Hardly overwhelming.

Today, 50% of the population are under 18 & 64% of adults say they do not feel it is safe to criticise Hamas.

So enough of your nonsense, though frankly, even if a large majority had voted Hamas in a recent election, that would still leave a lot of people who are against Hamas.

"Students often say that before they took this course, they had no idea biological sex characteristics could be so diverse, despite having taken several biology courses."

Shocked to read this, though I suppose it explains a lot. It can be convenient in some situations to use crude categories as a shorthand, but only if those engaging with them do not lose sight of the actual variability & complexity.

What the hell is going on in the earlier stages of education though? This is far from obscure or novel information.

Feels like everything is much more a faff to set up, then one bit updates & something or other is longer compatible.

Don't even want to think about the waste it must generate, both of devices & of the hours trying to get things to work whether at the development end or in the home.

And security for same.

For a feminist to demonise sex workers, or just fail to support them, is as counter-intuitive & bizarre to me as the idea of a labour activist who rejects & demonises workers generally.

So, so sorry you had to see that, and thank you for protecting the rest of us from seeing it.

On traditional forums, you'd have a lot of control over the posting of images.

If you don't wish to block images entirely, you could block new members from uploading images, or even from sharing links. You could set things up so they'd have to earn the right to post by being active for a randomised amount of time, and have made a randomised number of posts/comments. You could add manual review to that, so that once a member has ostensibly been around long enough and participated enough, admin look at their activity pattern as well as their words to assess if they should be taken off probation or not... Members who have been inactive for a while could have image posting abilities revoked and be put through a similar probation if they return. You could totally block all members from sharing images & links via DM, and admin email accounts could be set to reject images.

It is probably possible to obtain the means to reject images which could contain any sexual content (checked against a database of sexual material which does not involve minors), and you could probably also reject images which could contain children and which might not be wholesome (checked against a database of normal images of children).

Aside from the topic in hand, a forum might decide to block all images of children, because children aren't really in a position to consent to their images being shared online. That gets tricky when it comes to late teens & early 20s, but if you've successfully filtered out infants, young children, pre-teens & early teens as well as all sexual content, it is very unlikely that images of teenagers being abused would get through.

Insisting that images are not uploaded directly, but via links to image hosting sites, might give admin an extra layer of protection, as the hosting sites have their own anti-CSAM mechanisms. You'd probably want to whitelist permitted sites. You might also want a slight delay between the posting of an image link and the image appearing on Beehaw - this would allow time for the image hosting site to find & remove any problem images before they could appear on Beehaw (though I'd imagine these things are pretty damn fast by now).

You could also insist that members who wish to post images or links to images can only do so if they have their VPN and other privacy preserving methods disabled. Most members wouldn't be super-enthused about this, until they've developed trust in the admin of the site, but anyone hoping to share images of children being abused or other illegal content will just go elsewhere.

Admin would probably need to be able to receive images of screenshots from members trying to report technical issues, but those should be relatively easy to whitelist with a bot of some sort? Or maybe there's some nifty plugin for this?

Really though, blocking all images is going to be your best bet. I like the idea of just having the Beehaw bee drawings. You could possibly let us have access to a selection of avatars to pick, or have a little draw plugin so members can draw their own. On that note, those collaborative drawing plugin things can be a fun addition to a site... If someone is very keen for others to see a particular image, they can explain how to find it, or they can organise to connect with each other off Beehaw.

The extension of their arguments is firstly that women who wish to avoid the risk of being charged with manslaughter or murder in the wake of a miscarriage must abide by behavioural guidelines which are contrary to science. i.e., to rest indoors anytime she may be pregnant.

The intended effect being to remove women of childbearing age from the workplace & from public life.

Secondly: to severely undermine reproductive healthcare, such that clinics shut, specialists flee, research is stopped & general knowledge regarding reproductive health & access to care plummets.

The overarching ideology being the production of new labourers & to increase desperation, so that Capitalists can avail of ever-cheaper labour in order to lure factories to set up in the US. This is the endgame of "bringing back our jobs" + anti-abortion rhetoric.

That and, trying to create a situation where fewer people resist attempts to reinstate chattel slavery.

Because they want to reinstate chattel slavery, but need more of the population to fail to even try resist that.

Oh my days, Laura Jane Grace and uplifting news from Florida in one headline.

My heart is warmed. There can be light in the darkness.

These fuckers are such fucking ghouls.

If they just put a tiiiny bit of funding into supporting less unhealthy systems, they'd be at vastly less risk of the sort of reforms that will neuter them entirely.

Be quite amusing if we could poison their well by persuading a great many people to send in samples from other life forms.

Probably easier, cheaper & faster to make their data unusable via other means though.

CNN is covering it this evening, along with some of his other recent announcements (which amount to rounding up his political enemies & millions more besides), but infuriatingly still downplaying what his vision entails, nor how popular that is with Republican voters.

Was expressing thoughts on the matters raised in the article, which is primarily about the demonisation of sex workers by feminists.

Certainly demonising sex work seems compatible with demonising work generally, so long as one is cognisant that as a relatively small sector it can be very easily driven underground, which makes it considerably more hazardous for the workers.

Some other work environments are also largely concealed from public view, so though they're hidden for (somewhat) different reasons, workers in those sectors are also very vulnerable to abuse. Factory farms are one example, but there are many more.

Really I think it boils down to allowing the workers to be the ones whose voices are the most prominent with regard to their work, rather than other activists dictating over them.

Hamas are not their elected representatives. They are a brutal dictatorship who rule Gaza with violence and fear, including slaughter & rape of their own.

Maybe best to ask the friend who has changed their name what they'd prefer you to do?

Curious thing is, if you hang out in conservative online spaces where they retain some belief that they retain anonymity, once they start talking amongst themselves (instead of hyping themselves up on talking points shoved their way from think tanks) they express strong desires for reforms which, unbeknownst to them, are well in line with Marxist thought.

That doesn't mean they suddenly lose all of their horrible views about many other things, just that the working-class conservative is perhaps wholly out of reach than we imagine?

And, notably, when they're expressing grief that society is so dystopian, they often state that they'd basically be fine with everyone they currently hate, and happy for everyone to do their own thing, were society to be radically reformed.

I don't think that means they can be brought around to becoming allies in meaningful numbers, and as a group they remain dangerous, but it suggests they do experience profound unease with the trajectory of their own conservatism, and that in turn may offer clues as to why they cling so wildly to being the footsoldiers of oppression.

If right-leaning, but not bigoted, there is a lot of space within the Democrats for that, and always has been.

Which is less than ideal, as the GOP remains populated by a mix of extremists & the grossly inattentive, Democrats yanked well to the right of centre, and the left utterly stymied.

But, the point remains that if someone is turning a blind eye to the harm being waged against their fellow Americans in favour of some nebulous lean (which the GOP's consistently do not bother to address anyhow), then arguably they are far worse than a bigot, who at least one can consider to be haplessly hate-filled, rather than blithely lending support to the hate-filled.

America may be the far east to a lot of the world, but within Asia, Taiwan sits to the east of most Asian nations.

So though "the far East" is Eurocentric, I don't see how East Asian (or West Asian or Central Asian) could be.

No harm in asking your colleagues in Taiwan for their thoughts though?

Easy to let despondence & cynicism override reality, but if it were true that voting does nothing, nobody would put such effort into discouraging us from voting; into confusing us so much that we disengage.

Standing in line to tick may feel too tiny to count, but everything counts, from the mysterious interactions of subatomic particles to your most basic civic interaction with the rest of your nation (voting).

Late to reply, but very excited to have Moldova in our Union. I realise a yes vote is not a given, so all power for continuing the campaign to join if it does not succeed this time.

Magical, which would take too long to explain, and am off on an unexpected road trip later in the week with some new friends.

Feeling good, which is... weird but very welcome.

The fairies are real, people. The fairies are real.

In addition to the points people have already mentioned, it is possible that when you're doing your groceries, that your subconscious notices items which you aren't looking for that day. You tune them out because your mind is busy with other matters, but the idea of a lobster or a goose or whatever gets into your thoughts, gives you a craving which you then discuss, but the lobster or goose were on the shelves before the conversation & before the craving.

The same can happen with things like advertisements promoting a special deal this weekend, or whatever. We don't have to be paying attention or have any conscious awareness of the ad to get the idea "mmm, lobster", "oooh, goose" in the days following.

On top of that, the supermarkets have a sense of what situations make large numbers of customers interested in specific categories of product. So, the start of autumn can make people begin to think about ordering a big bird for for Christmas, summery weather can make people want shellfish to grill outdoors, etc.. The most obvious examples would be special offers on all of the items that are popular for BBQ when there's a hot dry spell, or stocking Christmas pudding & mince pies in the run up to Christmas. Yes, one can get these things at other times of year, but they're not promoted and are often tucked away, or you have to ask at the counter. In this sense, your cravings and thoughts about produce may just accord with that of others in your community, and the supermarkets' stocking is just a reflection of those trends.

That one's good enough to suggest to them!

Can see why they'd maybe be wary of getting into appraising open source projects if taking payments, but maybe something they could collaborate on with EFF & others. Maybe also that "alternative to" project, which doesn't currently focus on open source stuff but naturally covers quite a lot of it.

Misleading title - they're not doing this by applying 4% tax to the income of mere millionaires, they're doing it by applying 4% to the incomes of those with annual incomes one million and over.

That's a much, much wealthier cohort than the title implies.

Probably nothing more interesting than being absent minded.

They pull them down when outdoors, then forget to pull them back up upon entering an enclosed space.

And there's the rub.

Though am sure some are unaware how risible they seem to anyone vaguely normal, broadly this tactic is used in the hope of fooling onlookers by seeming like jokester weirdos rather than deadly serious ideologues.

Beautiful.

Some archaeologist is going to find this one day. Be fun to include a plaque with a message for them (and for anyone who uses it after you).

It is also a natural thing to think of, and easy for anyone over the age of 7 or 8 to figure out how to do it effectively.

When the humour is too on the nose to laugh.

Still, nicely done. No quarter for such willing facilitators.

They don't notice a thing until some pundit tells them to be wound up.

That wall looks like it needs a drawing of a happy & colourful bee buzzing away peacefully.

May you commit many (ongoing) acts of journalism.

Bzzzzzzzzzz

Think it is just that the situation is so incredibly upsetting, very prominent in the media and with no sense that even a vaguely ok remedy is coming anytime soon.

So it is natural that emotions run high, that people then speak about it in harsh terms and that this gives rise to considerable tensions. It is after all, a particularly bitter and lengthy conflict, and I think it maybe takes a special kind of individual to discuss it with gentleness, balance & empathy.

Generally avoiding conversing myself, and may need to stop reading conversations too. Just have to keep telling myself that though being informed about the world is good, reading opinions doesn't actually help those experiencing the horror on the ground, nor their loved ones elsewhere, so it is ok to avoid.

Doctors, of all groups, seem the least likely to harbour unrealistic fantasies about pregnancy, childbirth & the implications of unwanted pregnancies which come to term.

So though it isn't hard to imagine that providing obstetric care can have joyous aspect which might feel different to helping people who are sick or injured, the statement feels alarmingly divorced from the visceral & emotional realities of human reproduction.

Meantime your words reminded by of an often-quoted comment by a famous US comedian whose name escapes me, to the effect that advocating for the rights of the unborn permits an activist to feel all the passion of fighting for the vulnerable, without ever being confronted by the fruits of their activism whom they dislike as individuals, or whose behaviour they disapprove of, who are ungrateful, who present inconvenient human complexity, who are from groups the anti-abortionist hates, etc.. The activist gets to project their own ideal of innocence onto them all.

Though I strongly believe those who are responsible for pushing anti-abortion rhetoric into a major political issue just wish to ensure an increased supply of people who are more vulnerable to exploitation.

As you are limited in your ability to appeal to higher ups, I'd gear up to axing him.

Be careful to document EVERYTHING, and ideally to give him some research task or other discrete element out of the main project & which you can attribute solely to him. If he bangs it out of the park you'll have to just be glad he has strengths after all.

These assignments are supposed to train students how to work with those we do not get along with, but sometimes that necessitates not letting an obstructive individual have the opportunities to be obstructive.

Don't feel it is a conspiracy as such, in that I don't think it is coordinated between different social media companies, but it is true that damaging the ability to inform very large numbers of people about what's going on is incredibly useful to right-wing interests.

So though there's still a lot of organising & educating online, now people need to seek out information to find it - they're far less likely to accidentally stumble upon it whilst learning about their hobbies, following a band they're into, or seeking advice for some personal situation.

In the absence of robust networks for persuading people to back right-wing ideas, disrupting everything else is the next best thing.

But, I also suspect that many of these companies have not been as profitable as anticipated, that there aren't good ways to make them so, and that they cannot see how to remain functional in the face of imminent developments, so they're wildly scrambling to wring out some profit, slash costs, and flog off infrastructure before the whole thing comes crashing down & they're left holding useless, expensive messes.